Weekly Reflection: Pulling Threads

A story or poem may reveal truths to me as I write it. I don’t put them there. I find them in the story as I work. —Ursula Le Guin

Pulling Threads

I want to speak about a particular way of listening that being a poet has taught me through the years. As the years wear the faces off statues and the crests off warriors’ shields, I have been worn of the lines between what is visible and invisible, what is objective and subjective, what is real and imagined. I can no longer distinguish between the life of poetry and the poetry of life. Thankfully, everything is real!
Now, I walk down a street in summer, and moments glow and call. Each holds all of the Mystery, the way one drop of ocean contains the entire ocean, the way one small act of love contains all the feeling of everyone who’s ever loved.

The task now is to slow down enough and be present enough to enter each moment that calls. For each enlivened instant—the sudden light on a crow’s beak as it pecks the ground, or the shadow that covers the sad girl’s face as she stares into her half-eaten sandwich—each is a thread in the fabric of the Universe, each imbued and teeming with Spirit and wisdom. The task now is to be humble enough and attentive enough to pull the threads. When I do, without fail the threads unravel the cocoon of my own making that shrouds me from the Mystery that is always present.

Who would have guessed? Nothing is wanting but we in our want. Nothing is fragmented but we in our isolation. Nothing is completely dark but we in our hesitation. It turns out that the Universe—the endless fabric of now, the weave of all life that is timeless—is the one and only subject. And listening for it, to it, with it, we are privileged to become glowing threads ourselves. All of us here to unravel each other and to love back together what we find. 

We are left with the beautiful chance to spill our presence into the world. For each of us has a particular piece of wisdom, a bit of Eternity that if not brought forward will be lost, or at least stay silent during our time on Earth. This piece of inner wisdom that is in everything doesn’t have a name. We could call the piece that resides in you, your soul. So, as you would honor a grandparent or teacher, how will you befriend that in you which has no name? What kind of relationship will you have with the oldest part of your life, so it might speak to you?	

Let me tell you how I try to make sense of my own experience. Two things I’m sure of are that we gather meaning through relationship and that we understand life by working with what we’re given. This applies to creative work as well. I’ve never imagined my books as outlines to be filled. Once complete, not one of my books has ever been the book I started. Like everyone else, I move through the days, stopped by wonder and pain, and by worry and surprise. With each stopping, I listen for the story, the insight, the question, or metaphor that is my next teacher. As I travel to be in learning circles, I find that speaking to the honest questions I’m asked causes thoughts and associations to surface that I didn’t know I knew. So I pull the threads and save them in order to listen to them and work with them later. After months—of listening and speaking, when alone and with others—I have pages and pages of fragments, rough-cut gems that I have to work with to understand their meaning.

	Then I take the questions that won’t leave me alone and turn them into possible chapters. Next I reflect on all the fragments that have risen from conversation and circumstance along the way. And based on what I hear from each, I place them like shards or beads into the chapter files. Months later, I dump all the shards and beads from each chapter like rough pieces of mosaic before me. Then I hold them and put them together like chipped stones or riddles I have to decipher. In this way, the light on a tree in Vancouver three years ago and a quote from a little-known painter I discovered last month rub against the breathing of my father in his last days. And in the crucible of a patience that’s always hard to sustain, the meaning imbedded in each heart-instance starts to reveal itself. This is when my work as a poet truly begins: in weaving the things I could have lost over time into the fabric of what matters. I’m always humbled to retrieve insights and patterns much greater and more useful than my small mind could have imagined. As the conversation of a lifetime keeps unfolding, I uncover meaning.

Regardless of what you do for a living, the only important vocation is listening to the heart when it says: this is vital, this is alive, this can’t be lost. For me, the vitality and aliveness always precede my understanding of them. Making sense of our experience demands a faith in knowing what matters before we understand what it means. Making sense of what we gather demands a conversation with what we’ve found and with what has found us. 

Describing how Eudora Welty retrieved her fiction, Ronald A. Sharp recalled:

She puts bits and pieces of stories or novels in a file, and when she is ready to start shaping the material, she spreads out the scraps of paper on a bed or a table or the floor, so that she can see it all in one place, and then she actually “pins” together the various pieces into a whole.

In speaking about improvisation, the great jazz vibraphone player, Stefon Harris, said: “There are no mistakes on the bandstand. What is a mistake? Many actions are perceived as mistakes only because we don't react to them appropriately.”
Discovering as we go, there are no mistakes, just more of the fabric of the Universe coming into view. I used to think that pulling threads would lead me somewhere, to a pot of meaning on the other side of the hill, or to the center of time where the gears of existence would shine and grind. But pulling threads has only taken the coverings off of everything, including my efforts. And all unraveled, I found this poem:

Incandescence

I have worked months
on lines like these.
But I am not these lines nor
the effort to shape them.

Now that I have written books
I find I am not a book.
Now that I have sung
bouquets of song, I confess
I am not the song.

Now that I have loved,
I discover that what I am
shows itself to be touched
but is not the touch.

Even when feeling the wind
blow aside the veils
I cling to,

even when loving
the instant of seeing,
I am not what is sighted
nor the instant it is seen.

Undressed of all there is to do,
I vanish in a gesture
that is everywhere.

Questions to Walk With

Over the next week, note in your journal one detail from each day that stands out and speaks to you. Describe each carefully. Then, wait a few days and return to the details you have gathered and weave them into a poem or story.

In conversation with a friend or loved one, discuss a small thread you pulled and followed and what it led you to.

3–Session Webinar | The Fifth Season: Creativity in the Second Half of Life | January 11, 18, & 25, 2026

“Creativity is the ongoing conversation between our soul & the world.” — MN

Beginning next weekend, join Mark for The Fifth Season: Creativity in the Second Half of Life — a three-session live webinar exploring how creativity becomes a companion, a teacher, and a quiet form of grace as we age.

Through reflection, poetry, and heartfelt dialogue, Mark will guide us into what it means to stay close to life: to keep feeling, creating, and growing, even as time humbles us.

January 11, 18, & 25, 2026
1–2:30 PM ET | 10–11:30 AM PT
📍 Online

To register, please click here.

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The Best Year of Your Life Summit, Jan 13–20, hosted by Wisdom for Life.

This gathering is devoted not to fixing what’s broken, but to remembering what’s already whole.

Voices from many thoughtful teachers and guides come together—each offering a short, focused reflection meant to be lived, not just heard. No long lectures. No overwhelm. Just practices you can return to, again and again, in the middle of real life.

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If this speaks to you, you’re warmly invited to join through the link below:

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Upcoming Events with Mark in 2026!

January 11, 18, 25: The Fifth Season: Creativity in the Second Half of Life, a 3-session webinar, 3 Sundays. Register now at live.marknepo.com. – ONLINE.

March 2-7: The Fifth Season: Creativity in the Second Half of Life, a Mastery week, The Modern Elder Academy in Baja, Mexico, SOLD OUT, Click Here to sign up for the waitlist. – IN PERSON.

May 15–17: The Fifth Season: Creativity in the Second Half of Life, The Sophia Institute, Charleston, South Carolina. Link to come! – ONLINE & IN PERSON

June 19-21: The Fifth Season: Creativity in the Second Half of Life, Omega Institute, Click here for more information. – IN PERSON.